Monday, October 11, 2010

the one about sudden returns

Ah... It's kind of hard sometimes to get really excited about people's conversions when they vanish after showing great promise. Elvis, the super-psychologist who promised God that he would be ready for his baptismal date, has totally disappeared, as well as all of our other investigators. Sometimes it's really hard to put forth the personal effort to teach people and really care about them when most of them will just dog you the next week...

But you know who's saying that? Satan, that's who. And what do you say to Satan when he's trying to get you down? You say, "Get thee the heck hence, Satan!" and you care about the people anyway. Sometimes they're just temporarily gone, too. One of our very promising guys, Fatjon (formerly spelled "Fation"), ran into the other elders and gave them his new number. We're pretty dang happy that he's back. And the other day we went to try and give a less-active lesson to a less-active member, but she wasn't at home and we ended up talking to her non-member husband. We did the usual small-talk, then got into religion, and he did the usual light bashing of religion in general. We asked the usual "why?" questions and we got to explain our beliefs in more detail, and he was surprised and we ended up with more in common that we thought we had. That usually happens. When people are informed about exactly what we believe, they're surprised at how logical and normal our beliefs are. We invited him to read the Book of Mormon, and he said he would. We also left a talk we had printed off ("Safety for the Soul" by Jeffrey R Holland, Oct. 2009 General Conference) that we were originally going to leave with his wife, but he said he'd read that, too. So yeah, there's some hope there, too.

Other noteworthy events: We were walking through a park that has a nice restaurant with outdoor tables, and we heard our names called. We looked over and it was a pair of Elders from 4th branch sitting at a table with many other people. We went over and a man insisted on buying us lunch. I got pork chops. They were delicious. Turns out that John Hansen here is from Salt Lake City. His company goes around to many different places in the world training the local police forces how to use forensic computer tools. He has a son on a mission in New Mexico, and he himself served in the Manhattan mission. A very nice man, indeed.

The other morning, we were playing soccer and the ball got kicked very hard. Normally, that happens. But what doesn't usually happen is that someone's eye is in the path of the kicked ball. That eye was my left one. I was blinded for a few seconds, but then I was fine. I still have a slight blind spot in the bottom of my peripheral vision. I might get it looked at. At least I didn't lose my contact!

We were going to visit someone we had found while tracting. Now, a lot of names here are also nouns, like Ilir (freedom) and gëzim (joy). This man's name was Festim, which means, "party". The lights were out in the stairwell and we went to what we thought was the right door. When we knocked, a woman in a bathrobe with wet hair answered the door. She, not knowing a man named Festim, heard this from us: "Good day! Is party here?" She looked confused and said, "Uhh.... no." Then we asked, "Oh. When will it come back?" Thoroughly creeped out by now, she said there was no party here and closed the door. We, realizing our mistake, first felt sheepish, then laughed. Hard.